Practical Guide to the Assessment of the Useful Life of Plastics' is the result of a co-operative venture between ERA Technology Limited and Rapra Technology Limited, Europe's leading independent plastics and rubber specialists.
After price and delivery time, the most frequently asked question about a product is 'How long will it last?' Lifetime expectancy is often many years, the service conditions may be complex, and there is a scarcity of definitive data on durability. The situation is complicated by the fact that there are a vast number of degradation agents, service conditions, properties of importance and different plastics.
Most assessments of the lifetime of plastics are made by considering some measure of performance, such as impact strength, and specifying some lower limit for the property, which is taken as the end point.
The object of this publication is to provide practical guidance on assessing the useful service life of plastics. It describes test procedures and extrapolation techniques together with the inherent limitations and problems. The guide aims to make available the wealth of information that can be applied to help maximise the effectiveness of a durability-testing programme.
This guide seeks to be comprehensive, but concentrates on the most common environmental effects causing degradation. The test procedures used are outlined and the relevant textbooks and international standards are well referenced. Examples of lifetime testing studies are cited. This book will be useful for anyone responsible for designing, manufacturing or testing plastic components. It will also be of benefit to suppliers and users of end products, as assessment of useful lifetime is critical to the economics and safety aspects of any component.
Roger Brown is an internationally acknowledged expert on physical testing and quality assurance of polymers. He has over 25 years experience of running the testing laboratories and services at Rapra Technology Limited.
Dr John Greenwood studied at Cambridge and has worked for over 30 years on non-metallic materials for companies in America and Europe. He is an authority on mechanical testing and lifetime prediction of polymer and composite materials including pipes and geosynthetics. He is currently non-metals consultant at ERA Technology Limited.